Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't know what a $400k Security Engineer actually does to warrant that pay because you can probably find a similar job at another company that pays much less and probably makes you work more. I sure as fuck don't and I at least have one pentesting cert FWIW. This pricing scheme punishes people trying to be honest about their skill set. Otherwise why stop at the average? Just max it out and ask for $700k.…
Do ask for 700 but be prepared to be passed over for a candidate that's better but asked for less. And if you are exceptional (compared to others) then you damn well deserve it. Comparison to the rest of the market (on both sides) is the crux here, not being 'honest' or whatever (what does this even mean). Isn't it?
That market comparison is fraught with conditions and often only follows ill-defined job titles.
If you take a look at one of these postings - https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/292552236 - you'll note that the way it's written, there aren't any exceptional job requirements here. It's hard to see why the salary range has such a high ceiling.
Obviously in the interview, they could have much higher requirements, but we don't know that unless someone from Netflix chimes in.
For example,
>You have knowledge of various regulations and controls (SOX, PCI, CCPA, GDPR, etc)
how much is knowledge of each of those worth towards the final salary? Pricing each of those would add more fidelity to the market's signals, but companies often don't do that. Same with technical skills or knowledge of individual products: how much is AWS knowledge worth at the beginner, intermediate, and expert levels to a job that needs AWS knowledge?
This is like buying a publicly traded stock (not yolo'ing) with roughly 80% of the company information not available to you. That information is there for a reason because it promotes market efficiency. It allows you to more easily compare two companies that do similar work.
This is what is meant by honesty, but the job market hides this information. And the job market is often dishonest because it does not price these things, because it is hiding information from applicants, because that gives an advantage to employers. An extremely wide salary range here only serves that goal.
And on the employee side, it would mean that I can go learn AWS to a certain level, and I know that skill would contribute $X amount to the final salary that I can ask for. I don't have to play games trying to sell my skills for more than they're worth.